What, precisely, is requested when the question "What is X" is asked?

I thought that modern philosophy tended towards the tentative, the open-ended, and the permanent possibility of error, yet some philosophers on this site answer questions, usually on moral issues, with an almost dogmatic certainty worthy of Pope Ratzinger. How come?

What are some points to keep in mind when writing for a philosophy class? I just finished a course where every thing I wrote seemed to be wrong.

Do philosophers change language or does language change how philosophers think? I wonder about this when considering how attitudes change to certain things such as treatment of criminals or aspects of Human Rights. For example "Police Force" tends to be "Police Service"- sounds a bit nicer- and "Industrial Action" sounds nicer and more professional than "Strike Action". In human relations the word "Gay" has been introduced to describe homosexuals and lesbians. That seems to give a better impression although why that should be necessary given that most people accept that heterosexual does not need any other description is a mystery. The supreme example of word change is "Termination with extreme prejudice" for "Assasination"!! followed by "Rendition" for "Kidnapping". I have just read _I am, therefore I think_ and noticed that most references to people were female. An exception was in the chapter on the Environment page 104, where the example refers to a female police officer and the criminal is male!!...

For giving the students a good picture of a branch of philosophy are classic authors' text, specially very hard ones, replaceable by secondary literature or not?

This question pertains to philosophical education or philosophical pedagogy: Even though I do not hold any degrees in philosophy (I hold undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science), I believe that philosophy should constitute one of the foundations of higher education. It is impossible, I believe, to be truly educated without a sound background in philosophy and logic. To this end, I have always believed that with the wonderful emergence of new technologies it should be incumbent upon every capable institution of higher learning to seek to disseminate such core foundations. This can be done, with remarkable ease these days, through distance learning. However, with the exception of a very small number of philosophy departments associated with certain universities, most departments of philosophy look upon distance learning, seemingly, with great loathing. Furthermore, the thought of actually establishing distance degree programs in philosophy (whether at the undergraduate or graduate...

Isn't a philosopher's adoption of a certain style of philosophy grounded more in the personal psychology of the philosopher than in a coolly-taken intellectual decision? So when philosophers debate, we are witnessing what is fundamentally, despite all the fine verbal distinctions, a battle of temperaments.

What is the source of philosophy's authority? Is simply tradition? Or logical deductions from some common-sense axioms? Or an appealing fit between reasoned arguments and our contemporary cultural preference? Or maybe a bit of all three, with the other two taking up the slack, when the first one looks inadequate?

Since philosophy is a product of Greco-Christian culture, are all its conclusions circumscribed by a tacit limitation ("true only for Westerners"), particularly, perhaps, in the field of ethics?

How much math should I know in order to delve really deeply into philosophy of mathematics? Must philosophers of mathematics be mathematicians, as well?